


make me his

by thunderousbreak



Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: 1930s, Fluff and Angst, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Nurse Bucky Barnes, Pre-Captain America: The First Avenger, Pre-Relationship, Pre-Serum Steve Rogers, Pre-War, this is pretty soft
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-28
Updated: 2019-08-28
Packaged: 2020-09-28 16:56:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,758
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20429318
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thunderousbreak/pseuds/thunderousbreak
Summary: “You can’t keep doing this,” he murmured.“Yes, I can.”“No, you can’t. These men they- they carry guns. Knives. Things we ain’t ever seen. It’s a gamble opening our mouths.”“I can take ‘em,” Steve declared, and Bucky felt his eyelids descend in fatigue.“Flesh is nothing against the barrel of a gun or both ends of a knife. You’re human and humans get hurt.”-After another back alley fight, Bucky works steadily to fix Steve back together. Only this time Bucky is a nurse and Steve's carelessness is so much more terrifying when organised crime is involved.





	make me his

**Author's Note:**

> this came to me whilst i was killing zombies. so, thank you zombies for giving me the inspiration to write i guess?

“Are you angry?” Steve asked, his voice rough and strained.

Blood soaked his pale skin, face and hands coloured in crimson. He winced as Bucky directed him to the sofa, urging him to sit as he went to collect the first aid kit he stole from the hospital. When he returned, Steve’s piercing gaze shadowed his every move. 

“What happened this time?”

As he began to work on the cuts on Steve’s face, dabbing the water infused bud on his injuries to clean them, Steve told him. Missed out on some crucial details, important ones that would explain some of the trauma surrounding his bruises and why they decorated him in splashes of contaminated paint, confused rainbows besmirched by the hands that delivered them.

But Bucky listened, letting him speak. Used a plaster to rekindle unity between his dispatched skin, tightly knotting the lines together, a promise to heal sealing the bond. It would take a couple of days, but they’d disappear shortly. Another memory to store as his body eliminated the evidence.

To intervene and compel the truth out of him would result in an argument that Bucky couldn’t stomach. Especially not now, after having worked a seven-hour shift and being drenched in the smell of blood. Not that it ever worked, Steve was nothing if not stubborn. He wouldn’t let Bucky coerce a single breath from his lungs.

Once the story was narrated and Bucky had cleaned and bandaged most of the injuries on his face, rubbing salve on the bruises knowing that they would stain horrifically, he didn’t speak. Instead, addressed Steve’s knuckles, his fingertips soft but firm, exploring his skin intently and moving his wrist gently to ensure there were no other surprises. When Steve flinched but emanated consistent pride, he paid no attention to it but stopped. Small mercies.

“I'm just going to soak these in saltwater for a bit and then I’ll bandage them,” Bucky said, already standing. 

“Sure,” he heard Steve say.

Gathering the pan and filling it with water, he sighed quietly to himself, slumping against the counter and concealing the cooker from Steve’s observant eyes. Truth be told, he needed to get away. Just for a second, if that. Seeing Steve beam at his carelessness was something he absolutely loathed. Justice didn’t have to come at the cost of pain. It shouldn’t have been so brutal.

He couldn’t fault Steve for being as righteous as he was, after all, there was nothing wrong with him being supremely empathetic. But the methods and the execution, they were unkind and, in some cases, unnecessary. Having to bandage Steve in various plasters making him a walking medical kit, a patchwork of hurts, was avoidable. If only the host believed it so, too.

“All of your hands, put them in.”

Obediently, Steve did. Went where Bucky ordered, a devoted soldier to his captain. Afterwards, as Bucky’s nimble fingers resumed his face and moved it around to inspect the harsh knife callous and explosion of colour, he let him. Went where Bucky sent, just watching him intensely, heart steady as Bucky’s soared.

He loved him, god he loved him so much it hurt. His northern star, the configuration of his favourite constellation, a wish he never knew he had come true. How could a man so poetically beautiful exist? He was as vital to Bucky as words were for a poem. Without him, he couldn’t exist and that was just the beginning of his devotion.

“You should probably sleep for a bit afterwards, let your body rest.”

“Will you come with me?” Steve questioned, voice low and eyes calculating. 

From the two of them, he was always the one to take the greatest leaps and land on his feet, not always fine but usually without a scratch. Breath hitching, Bucky swallowed tersely and nodded. Short and quick, clinical in movement. “If you want to after this, then sure.”

“I do.”

Gazing into his eyes, watching the blue waves that were caught in a storm swirl, he thought to himself, _not so quick. There is so much left to see._

Hands stopping and no longer attending to the already nursed wounds, he watched him. All that courage, all that unrestrained bravery would surely kill him one day. It wasn’t safe for one man to harbour an infinite supply of courage; mortals could not be trusted with that responsibility. But his Steve was no mere human; he was as ferocious as solar winds, as blinding as the sandstorms in the Sahara, and as intense as the gaseous flares within the sun.

As long as Bucky lived, he’d promise to ward off death and stand before Steve as a shield, refusing to let anything happen to him. Such wondrous mysteries to embody humanity were rare, Steve was a phenomenon in all ways and more. A plethora of righteousness brewing in the heart of an inferno.

Bucky would die protecting him, a masterpiece that was bestowed to him as a gift. He must have done something good in a previous life to warrant someone so precious, but perhaps lived a life of glutton, which is why he had befriended a breathing temptation. 

Forcing himself to look away, he reeled Steve’s hand from the water and began to disinfect his knuckles, careful to minimise the pain. 

“Let me know if I'm hurting you too much.”

“You can never hurt me. All I feel is you.”

Stuttering in his work, heart elated and throat pulsating unrelenting yearning, his fingertips squeezed Steve’s fist to regain composure. If it was possible, he would have screamed. Opened his compressed airways to expel a bellow full of desire. 

Nobody could make him come undone like a painting stripped of its paint, other than Steve. His majestic touch and ethereal gaze, his immense words and profuse allegiance. They were the foundation of Bucky’s desires.

As he worked to help him heal, he couldn’t help but notice scars. Evidence of Steve’s virtuous and uncontrollable anger; his past that was shaded with limitless pain. Over the years, Bucky grew comfortable with the routine- tired, almost. Conformed to the situation which he decreed unavoidable. But he couldn’t be. Not when he saw what weapons the market sold and what ends people met on hospital beds.

Steve wasn’t in a mob, or a gang, or in any scene like that. But him pissing off someone who _was_ was too plausible, the punk didn't know when to keep his mouth shut. The equation to fight had numerous answers and too many of them consisted of irreparable injuries. Closing his eyes and thinking of men on the beds, shouting to get out and fight some more, their minds delirious. Thinking about the innocent people caught in the crossfire: wife, kids, bystanders. 

Steve could be the next. There was a target on his forehead, and eventually someone would hit it without hesitation. Their world was far from safe, why did he not understand this?

“You can’t keep doing this,” he murmured into the deep wounds engraved in Steve’s knuckles, voice soft and airy. 

“Yes, I can.”

“No, you can’t,” he stated, firm but fearful.

He felt Steve’s defensive ire return. “Why? Because I can’t defend myself, am I too weak?”

“No, you know that’s not it.” The kindness remained instilled in Bucky’s words, tender worry and assortments of all kinds of love, buried in affection. “But these men they- they carry guns. Knives. Things we ain’t ever seen. It’s a gamble opening our mouths.”

“I can take ‘em,” Steve declared, and Bucky felt his eyelids descend in fatigue.

“No, you can’t. Flesh is nothing against the barrel of a gun or both ends of a knife. You’re human and humans get hurt.”

Witnessing the evil contained in the weapons, patients convulsing and howling in pain as doctors urgently tied them back together, it meant that Bucky knew. Had enough knowledge to be certain of the destruction that metal could afflict. 

Stubbornly, Steve went silent. Jaw rigidly sharp and teeth grinding so hard Bucky thought he could hear them. Sighing, because the punk felt that he owed the world so much more than anyone ever could, he paused. Let his fingers halt in their work and turned to Steve, eyes finding a glare and disgust blinding his iris. 

“The world is a cruel place, you know this. And I'm not going to mother you, this is just a warning. You’re old enough to know when to back down and when to stand up. All I ask- all I want you to promise me, is that you’ll never end up on one of those hospital beds because of these folks. Please, it’s all I want.” 

His steady hands could operate on the torments left behind by bullets, were quick and confident in extracting the metal and tossing it into the basin. But to have Steve before him, barely clinging onto the life that already flees from him was a fate that would destroy Bucky, whether he survived or not. To know his skin would be permanently marred with the imposition of malice, it would hurt in ways the dead bodies Bucky sent to the morgue never could.

“Steve,” he said, assertive but gentle, nonetheless.

“I hear you,” replied Steve, jaw unclenching and releasing the tightly spun words. “Okay.”

Own hands enveloping Steve’s large fingers, stroking the skin which barely covered his bone, he swallowed and searched his eyes, desperate now. Eyebrows furrowing, lips no doubt reaching for the ground, he invaded more of his space.

“Promise me.”

“Yeah, yeah, I do. Whatever.”

Temporary joining their gazes, Steve spewed lies and looked away, never being good at lying. There was not a deceptive bone in his body, Bucky thought, honesty was the only language he spoke, brutal or not. _Then what of the enlistment forms at the bottom of the closet?_

“I said promise.”

“Jesus Bucky, okay, I promise. I’ll be more careful,” he said, exasperated and trying to incline out of Bucky’s grasp, wanting solace that didn’t scrutinise him.

He did it because he loved him. Bucky didn’t enjoy these conversations any more than he did.

“Thank you,” he said eventually, eyes departing from Steve’s face and following the road back to Steve’s knuckles, resuming his work.

He would rather Steve be angry at him than be dead, and that’s what he continued to say for the next three days whilst the house was contained in a vacuum which eliminated all sounds their words made. He’d come around soon, Bucky reasoned, he always did. 


End file.
